Loop the loop
by denise3
Summary: Daniel lives near Cleveland, working as an auto mechanic, in 1952. But he was born in 1989. He has no idea how this is possible, but he only wants to live his life in peace. But if there's time travel, then there are Time Cops. Or, how a sci-fi fan ended up in another universe and didn't even notice... at first.


**Chapter 1: A simple life**

Daniel walked home from the bar. He'd stayed a bit later than usual today, drinking with his two colleagues. It wasn't as if there was a whole lot of things he could do at home. No cellphone, no laptop, not even a personal computer or a game console. Well, he did have a cellphone, but there was no cellphone signal to connect to. He'd have to use a conventional stove to cook his food, there was no microwave oven. At least there were TVs. Black and white, though. He guessed that he was lucky that his antique cars hobby helped him get a reasonable job. Car mechanics were always in demand, and he wouldn't be exaggerating if he said he was good at it.

His girlfriend was travelling with her parents. He was fond of her, but it wasn't as if he missed her terribly. She was enchanted with him, since he was different from most men she knew. He respected her, and for her sake he resented the misogynistic customs of the time. But he was with her more in an attempt to fit in with the expectations of the time than because he really wanted a companion. He couldn't really open up with her, young as she was. Even if she were older, he'd hardly expect her to understand. And he couldn't afford to trust her, or anyone else. So he was lonely. And afraid, so very much afraid.

He still didn't understand what happened. He'd been out of town, hiking in the wilderness, when it happened. Afterwards, he was in the same place, at least in terms of geographical location on Earth's surface. Washington state, North America. But in time, he was over 65 years earlier. It couldn't be mere time travel, he wondered how he'd been almost in the same spot as before it happened. Because Earth is travelling some 30 kilometers per second around the sun, which is travelling at a speed of over two hundred kilometers per second around the galaxy, which itself is hurtling at enormous speeds through space. So no, in terms of spacetime coordinates, he was really very far from his point of origin. And he still couldn't quite believe that he'd travelled in time.

Impossible, it seemed. He'd done a seminar on the physics of time travel, he and his fellow grad students, mostly for a laugh. They all enjoyed scifi stories very much. He'd read a lot, Heinlein, Le Guin, so many other great authors. It was painful that most of the stories he'd enjoyed hadn't been written yet. If only he'd been reasonable at writing, he might have written some novels, but no. Not only he was an awful storyteller, he was afraid.

If there were time travel, there must be time cops.

He hadn't found any yet, and he wanted to make sure he'd never meet one. No waves. So, his knowledge of physics, computer science, history and technology, he'd better put all that aside.

He winced. It wasn't as if he could do much with them. He hadn't even concluded his thesis. His own knowledge of theoretical physics from the beginning of the 21st century wouldn't be that much far ahead of the state of things in the 50s. Sure, many experimental results were beyond the horizon yet, and some of the theoretical breakthroughs too. But he didn't want to do all the courses again, from the beginning. The combination of his age, nearly 30 years old, and previous knowledge, with no academic records, would attract too much attention. Computer science, on the other hand, would have been easier, if it wasn't at its infancy.

In a few years, he planned to try to take a little advantage from whatever he could remember of history. Though he didn't know much about the events and dates, he did remember a few company names whose stocks would most likely be wise investments in the long run. But that was as far as he'd dare.

He was still afraid. Though it's been six months already, and no one had appeared, so he'd begun to relax, a little.

The shock, in the beginning, had been great, and he'd been torn between the desire to go back and the fear of being found by time cops. He had no idea what they could do to him. Soon though, he realized that there wasn't much to go back to. His parents were dead, he'd just broken up with his spouse, he'd got disillusioned with his job working with big data at a startup. Lots of work, not enough pay, and he wasn't that young any more. Now, he wasn't much better, but he surmised he wasn't much worse either. And he very much wanted to continue living and doing what he wanted, thank you very much.

Because there must be time cops if there's time travel. He had no idea what type of time travel it had been. Or if there could be a paradox involved. He knew enough about them to understand it'd be better if he didn't know. He'd soon decided he wouldn't try to do anything to change history as he knew it. What little he remembered of it. And even if time cops did't catch him, he'd keep his head down: the American government wouldn't treat him much better if they found out what he was. But so far, nothing. Thankfully.

It helped that he wasn't American by birth. Born in Recife, Brasil, he'd come to the States for his graduate studies, and had been living in the country for seven years before the incident. He spoke English fluently, though he'd never been able to get rid of his accent. However, in the 50s, it could turn to his advantage. It wasn't much trouble forging an identity as an immigrant, and working blue collar jobs. He knew enough to blend in, and any incongruency he could blame on his different birth culture. In a country of immigrants, living the postwar boom, he'd been accepted and welcomed in the small town. He'd been lucky, he knew.

Today he was going home late, a little tipsy from the drinks. As a rule, he avoided drinking too much, afraid of the alcohol loosening his tongue, of saying something he shouldn't. He'd been in a somber mood today, not talkative at all, and his friends had given up on trying to cheer him up. He'd arrived here six months earlier, and he was feeling melancholic.

Approaching home, he saw the old car he'd already managed to buy, and the small house he rented. Things were so much easier in this time than in the 21st century. That was something he didn't miss from his previous life, how it'd been so hard to get and keep a good job. Or would be. Time tense problem, he chuckled. Then he froze. The window panel had fallen shut. The window panel he'd fixed with a peg, tied to a rope, connected to a weight kept in place by a wire attached to the stone slab in his backyard. The stone slab that covered the hole where he'd deposited his very very anachronic, over 6 inches wide, 128Gb memory, 21mp camera, Android cellphone. With charger and all.

They've found him. He rushed into his car, thanking the God he'd never quite believed in that he hadn't given up yet on his paranoia and had kept enough essentials for an emergency getaway in the car boot. He'd miss his cellphone, his musics and photos, but hopefully he'd still have his life. It might even be better, to leave it behind if they've somehow tracked him down through the technology of his cellphone, though he'd been careful and kept it almost always turned off and inside a makeshift Faraday cage. Maybe it wasn't good enough. He hoped that was it, and not something else he'd neglected and that would enable them to find him again.

He was leaving with the car, as fast as he could without making the tires screech, when someone came running from his old home's backyard. A tall man, dressed in dark clothes, was that a leather jacket he saw in the rear mirror? The time cop was calling him to wait, but no way he was going to stay around to be captured. Jamming his foot down on the pedal he turned the corner of the street, towards the road he'd memorized as the fastest way out of town. He'd go to Cleveland. He hoped it'd be easier to lose his pursuer in the bigger city, amid lots of other people. He was prepared for this contingency, he tried to convince himself. But he was shaking. He'd miss this simple life.

* * *

A/N: This is my first "OC from another reality falls into the Doctor's universe" story. I do love the premise, and I want to play with it a bit. I have a rough plot, though not much beyond the first few chapters. But I'm posting this now because I'm down with a cold, I can't concentrate in any of my other stories, and I wanted to post something today. The two next chapters for _The Enterprise and the Doctor_ are so close to ready, but I'm still not quite happy with them, so this one will have to do for the moment.  
A few warnings, though. Don't expect this story to have much in common with so many other Doctor Who fanfics that could be classed into the same category. I also won't commit to a regular update schedule. I'll work on this whenever I want a break from my other stories. I do intend to finish it, eventually.


End file.
